Unless you are the type of person who pays attention to details and has plenty of time, by late summer many parts of your garden may be overtaken by weeds.  Little ones, tall ones, and big ones.  For gardeners and homeowners, weeds are major nuisance and are the most aggravating challenge of keeping the garden, lawn, and landscape looking great.  One day everything looks perfect and nice and clean, and then days later there are weeds taking over. Ugh!  The war begins and so does the most hated gardener chore - weeding, which typically has to be done by hand.  And in back of your mind one can only think that you never intended for this to get this way.  It happens, regardless what you do, there will always be weeds.  And abandoning the situation or ignoring it will only make things much worse. Let the weed pulling begin…Where do I start first? 

There are a lot of strategies to consider when tackling weeds, unwanted plants growing where they don't belong.  Deciding which one typically is determined by where the weed problem is located.  Are they growing in a vegetable garden, lawn, flower bed, orchard, or a natural area?  Hand pulling by far is the best way to alleviate the problem.  But in some cases, that can be a major job and require a lot of work.  Spraying a herbicide, mowing them down, or just doing nothing may be another reasonable alternative. 

The other thing to consider is how the weeds got there in the first place and how the situation got so bad.  First of all there will always be weeds regardless of what one does to try to prevent them. You can only hope to just slow them down. Weeds need very little room to exist, and just the bare essentials to grow. They appear to just come up from nowhere, but in reality, weed seeds are blown in by the wind, brought in by birds, and are carried in by people, equipment, rainfall, and other animals. Disturbed soil, cultivated ground, and soft soil, are perfect conditions for weeds and allow the seeds to germinate and root easily.  Vegetable gardens and flower beds are good examples of this.  Others just manage to survive and thrive because there isn't a lot of competition from other plants.  Weeds, most of the time, come up in lawns because the turfgrass isn't doing too well and isn't choking out the weed. 

If you turn your head long enough, a new weed will pop up somewhere.  With the right conditions of loose soil, plenty of rainfall, and lots of sunlight, weeds will exist and be a problem.  The key is to eliminate them early while small before they become overwhelming and take over the place.  Applying mulch along flower beds and around plants will smother weed seeds and help suppress them. Spot treating with a herbicide will also help take them out before they mature. Use pretreatments when and where possible.  Tilling will get rid of a lot of weeds, but can contribute to new ones germinating. A good hoe is the next best thing.

Luckily, most weeds are a temporary problem and will die back at some point in time.  However, with the wide variety of weeds that can grow in the Alabama climate, when one dies there is usually another one to take its place.  The growth of weeds is the first step of nature taking back over the area.  Get a hold of the weedy situation before it gets worse and literally turns into a jungle. 

In recent years, seed companies introduced new hybrids, such as Blue Max and Top Bunch, that have higher yields than traditional open-pollinated varieties such as Vates and Champion. Blue Max, a hybrid collard with bluish-green leaves, produced high yields in Auburn University's Experiment Station research plots.  Home gardeners and commercial growers can purchase most new varieties through the mail from seed catalogs. Hybrids cost a little more than traditional open pollinated varieties, but their production is better than the more traditional varieties. 

Collards can be sown directly in the garden in mid-summer or transplanted from July to September. Plant collards on rows 36 inches apart with plants spaced 12 to 18 inches apart in the row.  When harvesting, remove one or more leaves from each plant but never harvest more than one-third of the leaves from a single plant. A small amount of sidedressed fertilizer after the first harvest increases productivity. These greens usually are ready for harvest about two months after planting, but thinnings can be used much earlier.

Water is the most crucial element of the lawn.  Not enough will kill it, too much will drown it, and irrigating it daily will only spoil it.  In between the showers of rain, supplement needed water by irrigating two times per week, not daily.  Lawns need about 1 to 1½ inches of water per week.  Mow regularly but do not scalp it, as this contributes to water loss and stress.
Fungus diseases such as dollar spot and brown patch can also cause problems and usually appear in late summer. Weather conditions typically aid in their occurrence.  Apply a lawn fungicide regularly to prevent and help control these funguses. 
Lawn insect pests are usually not noticed until the damage they have done shows up in the lawn.  Feeding chinch bugs and grubs are likely the main culprits that will cause browning and thinning spots in the lawn.  Apply an insecticide such as cyfluthrin or diazinon to help limit the problem.

For more information, contact the Tallapoosa County Extension Officeat 256-825-1050.